Social
Judgment/Involvement TheoryThis theory of
attitude change, developed by Muzafer Sherif and Carl Hovland
(and later by Carolyn Sherif), is different from other
consistency theories for two reasons. As its name suggests, it
is a model of judgment, which means that it declares that the
audience interprets (judges) a message. Specifically, a
listener judges how much the message agrees or disagrees with
his or her own attitude. Second, Social Judgment/Involvement
theory holds that a listener’s involvement in the topic of
the persuasive message -- that is, how important a topic is to
a listener -- is an important factor in attitude change.

In the fifth century B.C.E., Protagoras was a Greek sophist,
or traveling teacher. He rebelled against the idea that there
were absolute truths. Instead, he declared (in the
gender-biased language of the time) “Man is the measure of
all things” (see the discussion by Schiappa,
1991). Without
going into the philosophic details of his statement, we can
observe that one person can think a summer day is hot while
another believes it is only pleasantly warm. Two friends can
see the same movie and one will like it and the other will
hate it. And two people can hear the same persuasive message
but have quite different reactions to it. Social
Judgment/Involvement theory explains how two people can react
so differently to the very same message.

When I teach this theory in my class, I bring in three buckets
of water: hot, cold, and room temperature (tepid). I ask two
students to volunteer to participate in a “science
experiment.”One
puts his or her hand into the hot water and one places his or
her hand into the cold water -- but they aren’t told
anything about the temperature of the water in any of the
three buckets. Then I ask them to put both of their hands into
the third bucket of tepid water at the same time. I ask them
to describe the temperature of the water in the third bucket.
What do you think happens?

The student whose hand was in the hot water says, “cool”
while the student whose hand was in the cold water says,
“warm.”These
students both put their hands into the same bucket of water,
yet they described it differently. The reason they gave
different answers is that they had different comparison points
or anchors. The water felt warm to the student whose hand had
just been in the cold water (his or her anchor point), and
that water felt cool to the student whose hand had just been
in the hot water (one anchor point). Protagoras would have
been happy to see his point demonstrated this way. This
process is just what Social Judgment/Involvement theory says
happens when people hear or read a persuasive message. Each
listener or reader judges the main idea of the message, how
much it agrees or disagrees with him or her, by comparing the
message with his or her anchor point, which in Social
Judgment/Involvement theory is his or her existing attitude on
the message topic.

Of course, if I really wanted to know the temperature of the
water in three buckets I would just use a thermometer. We have
simple devices that accurately and objectively measure
temperature. We could easily find out that the water in one
bucket was 50 degrees, one was 70 degrees, and one was 90
degrees. However, we do not have any such thing as a
“message thermometer.”We have to make judgments about how much a message
agrees or disagrees with us because there is not accurate or
objective way to measure message position. Social
Judgment/Involvement theory holds that the process of judging
or perceiving the position of a message is important to
understanding how persuasion works.

I will first describe the nature of Social
Judgment/Involvement Theory. Then I will discuss experimental
research on it. Next I will assess its strengths and
weaknesses. A glossary of key terms appears at the end.